Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

Punishment in a forced labor camp
Georgia -- 1930s

Determined to bring to a blessed end my three day journey into the painful miasma explored by Douglas A. Blackmon in his extraordinary Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of African Americans from the Civil War to World War II, I chose sleep deprivation last night and read long past dawn.

I passed over not a word -- not even the Ibids in the extensive footnotes and bibliography section. Even that ostensibly dry and academic denouement had its horrors, however. I encountered citation upon citation of Congressional and federal records marking the infuriating inaction of the risibly defined protectors and defenders of the Constitution that exposed the Emancipation Proclamation (and subsequent Amendments to the Constitution regarding slavery and the role of African Americans in the United States) as the cruel joke it turned out to be for nearly a century after the ostensible "freeing of the slaves."

Nothing related to race, African Americans, American history, political "facts" or sociological issues in America will ever be the same again for me.

Perhaps I should rejoice in the fact that I am capable of being educated and instructed, of absorbing wholly new information at my advanced age of 40...

But I feel a weight upon me just now, so heavy it seems it will never be lifted; and perhaps that's as it should be. Self-congratulation for finally having attempted to learn something I ought to have sought out long ago wouldn't simply be unseemly; it would only be mildly less grotesque than that same attitude expressed by innumerable whites who still see nothing solecistic in claiming "We" fought the Civil War to end slavery, freed Europe from Hitler, defeated communism, marched for civil rights and so on.

I used to assure myself, privately, that despite the obvious shared ancestral shame of so many white Americans, my ancestors had nothing to do with that ugliness. After all, they were Irish and Scots -- northerners all, poor or working class until my mother's generation. Aside from the admittedly insidious and long-lived spectre of inveterate racism in their attitudes (which persists to this day, albeit in a milder and assuredly less overt form, in some of my mother's brothers and cousins), what evil deeds could they -- shunned and discriminated against themselves --  have perpetrated, after all? Surely my relatives and I share only the merest, microscopic percentage of the collective taint befouling all whites in America born second generation or earlier?

One of my annual diaries (when I remember to do them) is honoring the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during WW II, which happened to coincide with Hitler's birthday in 1943. I happen to feel that it was a particularly good birthday present for Hitler: the defeat of his elite force by a bunch of half starved, barely armed Jews.

This year the anniversary is particularly poignant because, as in 1943, Passover began at sundown on April 19th and April 20th, the day the uprising took off, was the first day of Passover. And that coincidence influenced the Seder I attended last night. In honor of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, in "honor" of Hitler's Birthday, in in honor of all who fight against tyrrany, I bring you a piece of history worth remembering.

(NOTE: I apologize for my recent extended delay in publishing this weekly column series. I was on Easter break the 25th and was busy with other matters on the 11th and 18th. I can assure you this lengthy delay was unintentional.)

Mr. Hannity: America's strength does not intimidate other nations. (p. 142)

My response: The United States is the most powerful nation on earth. Since we attained that status in the twentieth century, the rulers of this country have had the capacity to use that strength for good or for evil. In the 1900s we used our military might and economic prowess a number of times to defend weaker countries and assist poorer countries. World War II saved Europe from Nazi aggression, while the Korean and Vietnam Wars attempted to halt Communist advances. Our Marshall Plan helped Europe rebuild its economy after World War II; our Berlin airlift prevented tens of thousands of East Germans from starving to death.

Mr. Hannity: "The terrorists themselves, of course, carry on their war against America in covert fashion-but they, at least, are the enemy we know." (p. 5)

My response: One of the outstanding characteristics distinguishing the "War on Terrorism" from true wars such as World War II is the vast difference in our knowledge of the "enemy". In the war against Germany and Japan, we knew exactly who our enemies were, the locations of their armies and bases, and their approximate number. But the "War on Terrorism" is much hazier, due to the fundamental reason that it is not a real war at all.

With Bush so anxious to compare the trials of our own time to the challenges of World War II, and others on the right ready to equate what we're now facing with the greatest dangers of the past, it only seems appropriate that we see how Bush stacks up against the man who led us through those days.

That's right, folks, it's time for Presidential ThunderDome.  George W. Bush vs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  Two preseidents enter, one president leaves!